Certain businesses and professions have traditionally relied upon physical file folders to hold physical (paper) documents that are received and created in the course of doing business. For example, attorneys have traditionally used bi-fold and tri-fold folders to hold documents for each particular matter. These folders allow different types of documents for a given matter to be organized in a logical way within the same physical file. For example, documents representing communications (e.g., letters and emails) between an attorney and a client and/or service providers may be attached to the inside of one flap of a tri-fold folder, while communications with a government agency may be clipped to the inside of another flap of the same tri-fold folder, and while the attorney's notes and/or other supporting documents are clipped to the inside of a third flap of the tri-fold folder. Still other documents may be held loosely in one or more pockets within the folder. Commonly, at least some of these documents are attached inside the file folder in a particular sequence, such as in the chronological order in which they were created or received, and this may be true for each of one or more different sections (e.g., flaps) within the folder.
Computers, along with decreasing costs of data storage technology, have made physical file folders redundant in many respects, for at least some business and professions. Indeed, the business world has been steadily gravitating toward a “paperless” system, in which all documents are maintained only in electronic form. A paperless business has many benefits, including being environmentally friendly and reducing costs associated with purchasing paper and storage space for physical files. Many businesses use a computer-implemented document management system (DMS) to store files electronically. A DMS makes it easy to store essentially all documents created or received for a given matter in an electronic folder dedicated for that matter. Essentially any number of subfolders can be created within a given matter folder, to help organize documents. Further, a DMS may facilitate searching of folders and files by keyword and/or predefined fields and may provide for automatic backup of data.
However, a physical file system may still have some advantages over today's electronic file system. For example, with a completely paperless file system it can be difficult for a person to acquire and maintain a solid understanding of the matter as a whole or its context, particularly if the person has not worked on the matter from its inception. Typically each document is stored as a separate electronic file. The internal contents of any particular page within any particular electronic document in a DMS (or other electronic file system) are not randomly or instantly viewable as they are in a physical file folder. A person cannot rapidly flip through arbitrarily sized chunks of pages that span multiple documents, as they can with a physical file. Typically each individual electronic document is opened and viewed and then scrolled or paged to the location(s) or interest with those documents. This process can prove unwieldy, especially for matters that include a large number of documents, where users may need to switch back and forth between several different documents displayed in different windows on a computer screen. A user can easily miss or overlook important information because of the electronic file system's limitations in the way the information is organized and viewable by the user. Additionally, while a DMS or conventional operating system's file manager can list all stored files, organized hierarchically by folders and subfolders, for example, and sorted by any of various criteria (e.g., name, creation date or last modified, file type, etc.), the contents or relevance of those documents may not be apparent to the user from that listing.
These and other limitations of electronic document storage systems can hinder a person's ability to obtain or maintain an understanding of a complex matter that has numerous documents of different types and purposes, and may cause a user to overlook important information.